Shane keeps his hands buried in the pockets of a well-worn denim jacket. In the corner of my eye, I see his head facing decidedly forward, so I keep mine in the same direction. Every so often he takes a deep breath and I think he might say something. I’m not sure which I’d prefer, speaking or silence.
The town hasn’t changed too much, a few new shops, newer looking cars parked on the roads. The pub has been renovated since I was last here. I look in the window as we walk past it. All the lights are on, a few stragglers finish their drinks and an unhappy-looking girl stands behind the bar, probably wanting to get home. Shane mumbles something about new sofas and TVs for sports. I could ask if he goes in much, but I don’t. I know what he’ll say. On the few occasions he comes back to Wicklow he doesn’t tend to leave his mother’s house.
We cross a bridge, fast-flowing water rushing below us. The river is ancient and tidal. My mother used to tell me to stay well away from the edges when we’d go into town. “Once you’re swept up in that there’ll be no getting you out.” It’s nice being back home and when I am it feels like the only place in the world. Memories, ideas and sensations swirl around in my head until… what? Maybe they’ll all collapse on themselves like a black hole. I’ve felt like that a lot lately. Or maybe they’ll wash away with the water.
Shane stops, and looks at me, his hands still in his pockets. He raises his eyebrows in silent suggestion, gesturing to the road that leads to the harbour wall.
I follow him towards the sound of the wind and the sea, all whispering and singing. The cold cuts right through me and I can’t help but clench my teeth. It’s almost too dark to see anything, but I can make out the pebbled stretch of shore right to where the water is. Then it’s just black. Lights blink on the horizon, ferries sending people back and forth across the Irish Sea.
Every summer of my childhood we’d come to the harbour and it would be overrun with kids jumping into the water, a ritual of the school holidays. The height is greater the further you go down the wall, all the way to a slab of concrete called ‘the table’ which looks out over the other side into the unbroken waves of the sea. Only the fearless kids jumped from there.
It must be one of my earliest memories, standing on concrete and balancing on the balls of my feet, a greenish, greyish surface bobbing below me. I can still feel the fist around my heart stopping me from jumping in. I don’t know what I was so afraid of. It wasn’t the cold that bothered me, I’d paddled in the sea plenty of times. Maybe it was the prospect of falling, but surely that was where the fun was? That’s why you’d jump in the first place. I want to laugh at myself, five or six years old with an idea of self-preservation.
Shane was older than me, braver than me. I must have watched him jump ten times while I stood there, terrified and pretending it was the wind making me shiver. I watched his legs flail as he fell, holding my breath each time he went under until his head emerged, grinning up at me. He’d climb the ladder, disappear for a moment and appear again, drenched in saltwater, blond-ish hair soaked to a darker colour, sunlight gleaming off his gangly limbs. I remember him putting a wet arm around me and whispering in my ear, “You don’t have to do it if you really don’t want to.”
I shoved him away and said, “I want to!” He laughed at me. He had a way of making me think that everything I did was inconsequential to him.
I almost forget he’s standing right beside me. “Do you remember that summer I punched Connor Kelly for pushing you off there?” He’s pointing to the very spot.
Strange. Somehow I didn’t think he would remember that. I remember the shock of being in the air, the cold water, the tightness in my lungs, being swallowed by the scraping sound of gravel. Shane said he jumped in straight after me, but it felt like I’d been left there for hours. Connor was waiting for us on the harbour wall and made some snide remark. Shane went straight for him. I think of blood and the way Shane’s mam screamed at him, the taste of salt in my mouth. I hum vaguely in acknowledgement.
“He’s a lawyer now,” Shane says.
“I bet he loves the drama of it.”
“Sure, that’s Connor Kelly for you.”
The wind cuts the silence between us.
“Here, look, I meant to talk to you back in the house.”
“We did talk at the house.”
He huffs a laugh. At ease. Unserious. “Not properly.”
“Right.”
He slots his hands into his pockets and looks out at the harbour and the sea. When he smiles he shows off his teeth. I envy his ability to seem so effortless and casual all the time. “It’s just nice having you around lately.”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is. I miss you, to be honest.”
My stomach drops, but I feel myself wanting to be hopeful. “You could always text me.”
“I didn’t think you’d want me to.”
“There you go then.”
“No, I completely understood why. I’m sorry, I really am…”
My heart flinches and I can’t look him in the eye. When I speak my voice is quieter than intended. “These things can’t be helped.” But I think maybe I could have helped it on my part. You always know, don’t you? Part of you always knows the truth under the fantasies. Now I look back on the girl I was and I scold her for her childishness. I got my hopes up and that was my fault.
I drag my gaze to Shane and wonder why he looks so sad. Is it remorse or is it pity?
“We should get going,” I hear myself mumble.
Granny’s house, the empty house that still smells like cigarettes and hairspray, sits along the sea road. I make it a point not to slow down when we reach the hill and the road turns into a steep incline. My legs move in long, brisk strides. The muscles in my thighs burn a little and Shane disappears into a blindspot behind me. I can only hope I don’t look like a clumsy animal learning to walk for the first time.
“Here, wait for me, I’m meant to be walking you,” he says, trainers thudding against the road to catch up until he’s at the very edge of my vision. He reaches out for my arm, fingers pressing through my coat. I think about shrugging him off. I can’t stand shallow signs of affection, half-hearted hugs and false smiles. I wonder if he just wants an excuse to touch me, but that would be more wishful thinking on my part. So I let it happen.
Now it seems he can’t stand the lull in the conversation. “No, but I know it must be hard lately, with the funeral and everything.”
A ridiculous thing for him to say. I want to be angry at him for it. Of course, it’s hard. Funerals are hard. Seeing my mother grieving her parent, a woman we’ve only seen twice a year for the last two decades is hard. I haven’t cried about it yet. I keep waiting for the loss to hit me, a cavernous space to open up in my heart and leave me devastated. But I’m not. The hardest part of this last week had been visiting Shane’s mother’s house, knowing he was going to be there too. Listening to Shane talk about his job and his friends I don’t know. Maybe that makes me a bad daughter, a back expat returning to the place of her birth, only to be worried about some boy.
I kept waiting for him to say a name in particular, but he never did. I was too scared to ask about it over dinner, in front of his mam.
“How’s things with you and–”
“We broke up.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Shane’s fingers press a little harder into my arm, trying to reassure me, or himself. I can’t decide. Maybe I should ask something else. How? Why? When? Not that any of it should matter to me. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, not really,” he says brightly, coolly. No need to ask, he’s decidedly over it and has processed his feelings in a normal, healthy way.
We reach the overgrown driveway, unkempt for years, lined with bushes smothered in brambles. It would be nice in the autumn, picking blackberries from amongst the thorns. We never seem to visit at the right time of year for it.
It’s an instinct, stopping side by side at the same moment, just like we did at the harbour.
“I thought about calling you that night,” he says.
I feel myself frown, tension in my mouth and temples. He came to London last spring, mentioning the girlfriend over dinner, not an inkling of heartbreak. He was calm as ever and suggested a restaurant near Liverpool Street, soft and sure in his gaze as he looked at me from across the table. I’d kept reminding myself it wasn’t real, it was my own hopefulness.
“Why?” is all I can think to ask.
He shrugs. He’s facing me now, every part of his body turned into mine, feet, knees, chest, head. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“But you never did.”
“No. I think I felt a bit… I know this probably isn’t the right time to say, with everything that’s going on. I like having you around. I like spending time with you. I always have and you know that. And, well, to be honest, the last year or so, I’ve been thinking a lot about you. I play in my mind what might have happened if I had just…”
My chest tightens in panic. Please, I think, don’t do this to me.
“You don’t have to feel the same way as you did before, but if you told me now what you did then—”
“I don’t want to know.”
“But I’m saying that—”
“It doesn’t matter what you think now. The conversation was had. Neither of us can take back what we said.”
“I do. I take it back. You’ve always known how I feel about you. I’m sorry I was too slow to fully realise it myself. I know it’s tricky, but there’s no reason we couldn’t make it work if we wanted to. I want it to.”
“Shane, it’s not going to work.”
His hands have slipped out of his pockets and are restless, fingers intertwining, dragging over his knuckles. “I thought you liked me.”
Tomorrow, I think I’ll walk back to the harbour wall. It’s early in the year, too cold to swim, so I’d be foolish to jump in. Self-preservation. I’ll walk to the edge, stand on the balls of my feet, watching the water ripple and shift. And I’ll go alone, nothing else to listen to but the wind and the waves.
I look into Shane’s eyes. I used to love them, the colour of ice and clear summer skies. I loved that I felt seen by them. The last few years I’ve found that blue eyes unnerve me. “I did like you. Maybe I still do. But now you’re just pissing me off.”